Dancing Spoon

NY Times Holiday Cookbooks

Cookbooks Best

by J. Michael Wheeler
NY Times 36 Holiday Cookbooks
Summer’s over and the grilling’s no longer easy. So as Christine Muhlke of The New York Times says, “Summer’s homesteading how-to’s and grilling guides have given way to fall’s fearlessly bountiful lineup. It’s the time of year when big chefs send out their big books... It’s also the time for really useful books that will nudge you deeper into the winter kitchen to discover (or rediscover) the secret to no-brainer bread — or find out how much more your co-workers will like you if you bring in a “Naughty Senator” cake."

Here’s an amuse-bouche of Muhlke’s review, followed by the full course of books she’s laid out for our pleasure. All the books listed here are available at Foodie’s Emporium NY Times Holiday Cookbooks.
 
Muhlke begins with Thomas Keller, “...the biggest American chef with the biggest book...is a pro at translating his restaurant menus into lavish cookbooks for the advanced home cook.”  AD HOC AT HOME: Family-Style Recipes

Gordon Ramsay “has also set out to prove he can cook like the little people,” with his new COOKING FOR FRIENDS. This year’s most talked about restaurant book this year is MOMOFUKU from David Chang.

Should a diner who orders a dish called Sound of the Sea listen to an iPod playing waves? Well of course, according to Heston Blumenthal, the chef of the three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, England. His new tome, FAT DUCK COOKBOOK  is a “lavish extravaganza.”

GOURMET TODAY: More Than 1,000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen, compiled by the magazine’s editor, the former New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl.

I KNOW HOW TO COOK (Je Sais Cuisiner)  was written in the early 1930s by the Sorbonne home-economics teacher Ginette Mathiot. It is the French “Joy of Cooking.” While I lived in France I sought out such a book and this it the one I found. My copy is the French version. But that’s okay, because if a dish doesn't come out quite right, I can blame it on my tortured French!

LA CUCINA: The Regional Cooking of Italy translated by Jay Hyams

THE PLEASURES OF COOKING FOR ONE by Judith Jones, who  concluded that it’s a delight to cook for one: “I open up the wine and light the candles, turn on some music, and give thanks.” 

Julie & Julia: the Movie

On Film Cooking

by J. Michael Wheeler
What's for Dinner?
Julia Child has influenced so many of us: her recipes and TV shows were our first introduction to cooking and to French cooking (not the least of which was how to be brave in the kitchen). We would try this recipe and then cook that one. We could pretty much count the number of Childs' recipes we'd attempted. But it was certainly nowhere near all 524 of them.

Julie Powell did just that and wrote about it: Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. And now Director Nora Ephron combines Julie Powell's book on her quest to "be like Julia" and Child's own memoir of her years in France, My Life in France, in a new film (opening August 7, 2009) starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell.

Streep practically channels Julia Child as you can see in this trailer from the film. The cast also includes Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, and Linda Emond. Watch the trailer to the film, Julie & Julia.

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My Life in France
by Julia Child
Julie Child's memoir of her first embrace of France and cooking. Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. 

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously
by Julie Powell
Julie & Julia, the bestselling memoir that's "irresistible....A kind of Bridget Jones meets The French Chef" (Philadelphia Inquirer), is now a major motion picture. Julie Powell, nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, resolves to reclaim her life by cooking in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her unexpected reward: not just a newfound respect for calves' livers and aspic, but a new life-lived with gusto. The film is written and directed by Nora Ephron and stars Amy Adams as Julie and Meryl Streep as Julia.

Hand selected Books for Foodies are at Foodie's Emporium! 

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Food of a Younger Land

by J. Michael Wheeler
Regional cuisine was the way of life in America before the interstate, fast food, and the homogenization of our menus. To chronicle the cooking and eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people In the 1930s, FDR created the Federal Writers’ Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. The project, called “America Eats,” and writers were dispatched all across America. It was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and never completed.

Mark Kurlansky’s latest book captures these remarkable stories, and with authentic recipes, anecdotes, photos, and his own insights, guides us to a time when Americans had never heard of fast food and the grocery superstore was a thing of the future.

Best Cookbooks IACP 2009

2009 Best Books

by J. Michael Wheeler
The IACP Cookbook Awards
The IACP Cookbook Awards annually celebrate the year's most outstanding food and beverage publications. The awards program was created to encourage and promote quality and creativity in cookbook writing and publishing and to expand awareness of culinary literature. The IACP Cookbook Awards have become the industry's most coveted acknowledgment of excellence in the cookbook publishing world.

Cookbook of the Year
A16: Food + Wine
At San Francisco's acclaimed A16 restaurant (named for the highway that cuts across southern Italy), diners pack the house for chef Nate Appleman's house-cured salumi, textbook Naples-style pizzas, and gutsy slow-cooked meat dishes. Wine director Shelley Lindgren is renowned in the business for her expeditionary commitment to handcrafted southern Italian wines. In A16: FOOD + WINE, Appleman and Lindgren share the source of their inspiration--the bold flavors of Campania.

Winner: Compilations Category
The Bon Appetit Cookbook: Fast Easy Fresh
For more than half a century, Bon Appétit has been the go-to source for straight-forward, sophisticated recipes, each with a contemporary twist. Now more than ever we also want to be conscientious about choosing responsibly sourced ingredients and healthy foods. The experts at Bon Appétit show how, in the most comprehensive collection—ever—of the magazine's best, most delicious, fast and easy recipes. As a cookbook, Fast Easy Fresh is unparalleled—every recipe is simple to use and has been tested with care by the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen.  It will become your indispensable source for all the tips, hints, and tricks you need to keep you on top of your game. Eating local, eating better, eating fresh—it all starts here, in The Bon Appétit Fast Easy Fresh Cookbook.

Mark Bittman: A New Recipe

by J. Michael Wheeler
Mark Bittman: Conscious Eating Tom Ashbrook of On Point (2.2.09) from NPR, interviewed food writer Mark Bittman, food columnist for The New York Times. He writes “The Minimalist” column and the “Bitten” blog and is the author of "How to Cook Everything." Mark Bittman has joined the ranks of foodies with a cause. His cause is nothing less than saving the health of Americans while at the same time saving the planet.

Bittman says that the way Americans eat are killing both themselves and the planet. "Too much meat. Too much junk food. Too big a footprint."

From the award-winning champion of culinary simplicity who gave us the bestselling How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian comes Food Matters, a plan for responsible eating that's as good for the planet as it is for your weight and your health.

We are finally starting to acknowledge the threat carbon emissions pose to our ozone layer, but few people have focused on the extent to which our consumption of meat contributes to global warming. Think about it this way: In terms of energy consumption, serving a typical family-of-four steak dinner is the rough equivalent of driving around in an SUV for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home.

Bittman offers a no-nonsense rundown on how government policy, big business marketing, and global economics influence what we choose to put on the table each evening. He demystifies buzzwords like "organic," "sustainable," and "local" and offers straightforward, budget-conscious advice that will help you make small changes that will shrink your carbon footprint -- and your waistline.

Listen to Tom Ashbrook interview Mark Bittman: Conscious Eating: Click Here.

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Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes Bittman, a food writer who loves to eat and eats out frequently, lost thirty-five pounds and saw marked improvement in his blood levels by simply cutting meat and processed foods out of two of his three daily meals. But the simple truth, as he points out, is that as long as you eat more vegetables and whole grains, the result will be better health for you and for the world in which we live.

Hand selected books for foodes are at Foodie's Emporium! Click here.

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Old Time Fall Dishes

Cooking Simple

Carrie Gamble’s grandmother grew up on a 42-acre orchard farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania complete with chickens, cows and pigs. There was a bounty of farm fresh foods served at every meal. Carrie has collected those recipes and memories in Grandmother's Cookbook.

Carrie shares her grandmother's old fashioned Tomato Soup recipe that will warm you on a cool fall evening. Plus a special Apple Pie recipe just perfect for this time of year! Both recipes are simple and delicious! Enjoy!

Old Time Summer Dishes

Cooking Simple

Carrie Gamble’s grandmother grew up on a 42-acre orchard farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania complete with chickens, cows and pigs. There was a bounty of farm fresh foods served at every meal. Carrie has collected those recipes and memories in Grandmother's Cookbook. Here she shares two of her grandmother's summertime recipes for a simple String Bean Salad and Corn and Apple Fritters.

June '08 Foodies' Book

Foodies Books for

The Saucier's Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip through the Great Cooking Schools of Europe
by Bob Spitz

The education of a barbarian in the temples of haute cuisine.
In the blink of an eye, Bob Spitz turned fifty, finished an eight-year book project and a fourteen-year marriage that left him nearly destitute, had his heart stolen and broken on the rebound, and sought salvation the only way he knew how. He fled to Europe, where he hopscotched among the finest cooking schools in pursuit of his dream. The urge to cook like a virtuoso, to unravel the mysteries of the process, had become an obsession.

Spitz hit the fabled cooking-school circuit in a series of idyllic European villages, and The Saucier's Apprentice is a chronicle of his exploits. Combining an outrageous travelogue with gastronomic lore, hands-on cooking instruction, hot-tempered chefs, local personalities, and a batch of memorable recipes, Spitz's odyssey recounts the transformation of a professional writer—and lifelong kitchen amateur—into a world-class cook. 30 illustrations.

For more details or to buy click here.

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Flatbreads & Flavors
by Jeffrey Alford
"Two people caught in the grip of wanderlust," as Alford and Duguid describe themselves, this American- Canadian pair has traveled for nearly two decades, singly and together, throughout Asia, Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, and North America. As they have pursued their passions for travel photography and culinary research, they have found around the world a shared and nourishing element of culture and cuisine: flatbreads, the simplest, oldest, and most marvelously varied form of bread known to humankind. Immersing themselves in local cultures-from the Malaysian island of Penang and the high Himalayan passes of Tibet to the market stalls of Provence and the pueblos of New Mexico -- Adford and Duguid have studied bread baking and cooking with local bakers, in family kitchens, with street vendors, and at neighborhood restaurants and cafes.

For more details or to buy click here.

2008 Cookbook Winners

2008 Best Books

The IACP Cookbook Awards
The IACP Cookbook Awards annually celebrate the year's most outstanding food and beverage publications. The awards program was created to encourage and promote quality and creativity in cookbook writing and publishing and to expand awareness of culinary literature. The IACP Cookbook Awards have become the industry's most coveted acknowledgment of excellence in the cookbook publishing world.

Cookbook of the Year
Fish Forever: The Definitive Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy, Delicious, and Environmentally Sustainable Seafood
Author: Paul Johnson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Editor: Justin Schwartz
For more details or to buy click here.

Chefs and Restaurants Category
Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking
Authors: Masaharu Morimoto
Editor: Anja Schmidt and Susan Wyler
Publisher: DK Publishing
For more details or to buy click here.

New: 4.11.08 Books for Cooks

Releases New

Food & Wine Annual Cookbook 2008: An Entire Year of Recipes
Almost one million subscribers heartily agree: there’s always something delicious going on in Food & Wine. And it’s all here in the annual cookbook, which includes every recipe published in the magazine during 2007 more than 600 of them accompanied by scrumptious-looking photographs. The contributors remain absolutely stellar, cuisine’s finest, including such cookbook authors, chefs, and food luminaries as Jacques Pepin, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Paula Wolfert, and Al Roker. Plus, this year’s volume is organized seasonally, so it’s even easier to find the right recipe for the right occasion.

For more details or to buy click here.

Mastering Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Tools in Your Kitchen
By Norman Weinstein

As the number of gourmet home kitchens burgeons, so does the number of home cooks who want to become proficient users of the professional-caliber equipment they own. And of all kitchen skills, perhaps the most critical are those involving the proper use of knives.

Norman Weinstein has been teaching his knife skills workshop at New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education for more than a decade— and his classes always sell out. That’'s because Weinstein focuses so squarely on the needs of the nonprofessional cook, providing basic instruction in knife techniques that maximize efficiency while placing the least possible stress on the user’s arm. Now, Mastering Knife Skills brings Weinstein’'s well-honed knowledge to home cooks everywhere.

For more details or to buy click here.

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